Which Salesforce objects you clean first depends on which agents you deploy. Service agents read Case and Knowledge; sales agents read Lead, Opportunity, Account, and Contact. This guide covers the where of Salesforce data cleanup for Agentforce — the specific objects and fields to clean, the dimension at risk on each, and the cleanup actions to run.
For the when — the four-phase timeline that surrounds this work — see Agentforce Data Quality: Preparing Salesforce Data for AI. This article fits inside Phase 2 of that timeline, where you remediate object by object. Run a DQS scan on each object before you start so you know which fields actually fail, rather than cleaning fields that are already fine.
Account
Sales agents read Account to ground responses about a customer’s industry, location, and relationship. When the agent answers “what do we know about this account,” it draws from these fields.
| Priority field | Dimension at risk | What bad data does to the agent |
|---|---|---|
Name | Uniqueness | Duplicate accounts split history, so the agent retrieves a partial record |
Industry | Consistency | ”Tech”, “Technology”, and “IT” read as three segments, breaking grounded answers |
BillingCountry | Consistency | ”US”, “USA”, “United States” fragment geographic context |
Phone / Website | Validity | Malformed values produce unusable contact details in responses |
Cleanup actions:
- Run a Uniqueness scan to find duplicate Accounts before deployment. Duplicates teach the agent contradictory facts about the same customer. See Uniqueness.
- Use Import from Field on
IndustryandBillingCountryto discover every variant that exists, then define canonical values in the Definition Builder and normalize. - Run a Validity scan on
PhoneandWebsiteto catch malformed entries. Target fields where Validity Rate falls below 90%.
Contact
Agents read Contact to identify who they are dealing with and how to reach them. A sales agent drafting an outreach message pulls the name, title, and email from here.
| Priority field | Dimension at risk | What bad data does to the agent |
|---|---|---|
Email | Validity | Invalid addresses make agent-suggested outreach fail |
Phone | Validity | Malformed numbers surface as broken contact details |
Title | Completeness | Empty titles remove the role context the agent uses to personalize |
MailingCountry | Consistency | Inconsistent country values misroute region-specific answers |
Cleanup actions:
- Run a Validity scan on
EmailandPhone. These are the fields an agent acts on, so format errors turn into failed actions. See Validity. - Run a Completeness scan on
Titleand measure Completeness Rate. Missing titles strip the agent of the role context it needs to tailor a message. - Standardize
MailingCountrywith Import from Field, matching the canonical list you defined on Account so the two objects agree.
Case
Service agents work primarily from Case. The agent reads the Subject and Description to understand the issue, then grounds its reply in that context. This is the highest-leverage object for a service deployment.
| Priority field | Dimension at risk | What bad data does to the agent |
|---|---|---|
Description | Completeness | An empty Description leaves the agent no context, so it returns a generic reply |
Subject | Completeness | Missing subjects weaken case classification and routing |
Status / Origin | Consistency | Variant values fragment the agent’s view of case state and channel |
Description / Comments | PII Detection | SSNs and card numbers pasted from email enter the AI context |
Cleanup actions:
- Run a Completeness scan on
Description. Description completeness equals agent context; a blank field is the most common reason a service agent answers vaguely. See Completeness. - Standardize
StatusandOriginusing Import from Field to surface every existing value, then normalize to your canonical picklist. - Run a PII scan on
Descriptionand Case Comments. Email-to-case captures customer messages that contain PII, and the agent can surface that PII in a response. See PII Detection and the Agentforce PII compliance guide.
Lead
Sales agents read Lead to qualify and route inbound interest. The agent decides next actions from the company, source, and status, so gaps here send leads down the wrong path.
| Priority field | Dimension at risk | What bad data does to the agent |
|---|---|---|
Email | Validity | Invalid addresses break agent-driven follow-up |
Company | Completeness | Missing company data blocks qualification logic |
LeadSource | Consistency | Inconsistent sources distort the agent’s routing decisions |
Status | Consistency | Variant statuses confuse where the lead sits in the funnel |
Cleanup actions:
- Run a Validity scan on
Emailand a Completeness scan onCompany. These two fields drive whether the agent can act on a lead at all. - Use Import from Field on
LeadSourceandStatusto find drift, then constrain to a defined value set. See Consistency. - Run a PII scan on any notes or description fields where reps paste raw inbound messages.
Opportunity
Sales agents read Opportunity to answer pipeline and forecast questions. A stale stage or missing amount produces a confidently wrong answer about deal status.
| Priority field | Dimension at risk | What bad data does to the agent |
|---|---|---|
StageName | Consistency | Non-standard stages misrepresent where deals stand |
CloseDate | Timeliness | Past close dates on open deals teach the agent outdated pipeline facts |
Amount | Completeness | Missing amounts distort any forecast the agent reports |
Cleanup actions:
- Run a Timeliness scan to flag open Opportunities with
CloseDatein the past. Stale dates make the agent report a pipeline that no longer exists. See Timeliness. - Run a Completeness scan on
Amount. An agent summarizing pipeline value cannot do so reliably when amounts are blank. - Confirm
StageNamematches your defined sales process with a Consistency scan.
Knowledge
Service agents ground answers in Knowledge articles. The agent retrieves an article and presents its content as the authoritative answer, so a stale or thin article becomes a wrong answer delivered with confidence.
| Priority field | Dimension at risk | What bad data does to the agent |
|---|---|---|
| Last modified date | Timeliness | Stale articles produce outdated answers the agent presents as current |
Title / Summary | Completeness | Thin metadata weakens retrieval, so the agent cites the wrong article |
| Article body | PII Detection | Embedded customer data can leak into a generated answer |
Cleanup actions:
- Run a Timeliness scan against the last modified date to surface articles past your freshness threshold. Outdated articles are the leading source of confidently wrong service answers.
- Run a Completeness scan on
TitleandSummary. The agent uses these for retrieval, so weak metadata leads it to the wrong source. - Run a PII scan on the article body to confirm no customer-specific data was pasted into a published article.
Which objects should you clean first?
Clean the objects your agents actually read, in the order their answers depend on them. The matrix below maps cleanup priority to agent type.
| Object | Service agent | Sales agent | Employee-facing agent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Case | Priority 1 | Low | Medium |
| Knowledge | Priority 1 | Low | Priority 1 |
| Account | Medium | Priority 1 | Medium |
| Contact | Medium | Priority 1 | Medium |
| Lead | Low | Priority 1 | Low |
| Opportunity | Low | Priority 2 | Medium |
For a service deployment, start with Case Description completeness and Knowledge timeliness, because those two fields determine whether the agent has correct context to answer from. For a sales deployment, start with Account and Contact, then move to Lead and Opportunity. Across every agent type, run PII scans first on the text fields the agent reads, since a PII finding is a compliance issue rather than a quality one. The Agentforce data readiness checklist lists the pre-deployment thresholds to hit on each object.
Next Steps
- Agentforce Data Quality: Preparing Salesforce Data for AI: the four-phase timeline this cleanup fits inside
- Why Agentforce Agents Fail: the data problems behind unreliable agent output
- Agentforce Data Readiness Checklist: pre-deployment thresholds per object
- How to Improve Data Quality in Salesforce: the detect, fix, prevent, monitor loop
- Agentforce Data Quality FAQ: common questions answered
- AI Readiness Assessment: get your current readiness score